Monday, June 16, 2014

The Ape-Alien Thing

My lower back has been giving me fits and of course, instead of thinking that maybe I should be doing a few more crunches and stretches (the back's health begins with the muscles of the abdomen!) I have decided that I probably have either colon or ovarian cancer. Probably colon.
And I don't even google this shit. Bad enough I know what I know from nursing school which I attended so long ago that it's amazing they didn't teach us how to assist physicians in cupping and bleeding.

Remember when I thought I had skin cancer but it was a tick?
Yeah. Like that.

Oh well. Despite the advanced case of colon cancer, I have had good energy today. The walk in the 90 degree heat, the trip to the grocery store to buy Ramen noodles and watermelons, the laundry, the making up of the bed with the fresh, line-dried crispy sheets, making Mr. Moon's snack bag and coffee drink, filling up the chicken waterers, watering the porch plants. I have stayed busy.

After Mr. Moon left for auction, I went into my office, as I have been doing in the last week to do some actual writing. Not that blog-writing isn't actual writing but it's not fiction. Okay, it's mostly not fiction. And as almost always, when I go out into that magical room which used to be the kitchen of this house and which is filled with some of my most beloved treasures, and I sit down to my laptop, the jet-engine powered fan blowing on me, my blooming phlox right outside, I am happy.
A sort of happy that nothing else can compete with.
A sort of happy that a dyed-in-the-wool martyr like me denies herself because it's too glorious for words and that, my friend, is the pathway to HELL!
Which of course I don't believe for an instant and yet, somehow, I do.
Maurice finds me out there, meows her irritation that she had to look for me and stretches out on the chaise lounge which my old dog Pearl ate some of the stuffing out of because she loved to make caves out of furniture. It's lovely to have Maurice there, silent but company, nonetheless. And on a good day of writing, I am transported to another dimension and time flies by with no respect or responsibility to whatever reality it is that I usually live in and it is good.

So that has been my day. And my back hurts. The bottom and the top of it now, and I am no doubt suffering from the fact that human beings have not truly evolved into bipedal creatures and that gravity will have its damn way with us after sixty years or so. You know my theory about why back problems are so common among humans? It's because we are a genetic experiment between apes and aliens and aliens did not evolve in this gravity and so there you go. The same theory explains a lot about the nature of the human brain and how often it goes wonky and if you look around you, you will realize that some people are far more alien and some people are far more ape and this in itself has contributed to a vast conundrum which is humanity, a species which has produced Michelangelo as well as Hitler, so incredibly afraid of any tribe which was not his own that he almost destroyed the world in his insane and horrendously supported quest to rid the species of that which he did not recognize as family or tribe and there you have it.

15 comments:

LOL, lady, you GET me!I was just contemplating my shoulder cancer, my colon cancer, and of course, my uterine/ovarian/cervical cancer that probably all started with my sore breasts, that surely can't be my cycle, it's got to be the cancer.Ahem.So ya, I do that.

Okay, so I thought that it was only survivors who panicked at every ache and pain because it may be cancer. The truth is that I only have about a 10% chance that I will have disease free survival over the next ten years and my doctors still roll their eyes at my hysterics. Here's my take. You can't change it so why worry about it. After a certain age the cure is worse than the disease. I am fast approaching that age.

Glad you're writing! I love your blog writing (you know that!), but I know you love writing stories in that room and I remember you saying the history of the house and the author who lived there, which I find incredibly cool.

Did I tell you I know of another chicken person here in Lincoln, Nebraska (at my place of employment)? She is just as in love with her chickens. :-)

Life is not normal yet, but I am thankful and am trying to keep things in perspective. Hugs, Ms. Moon!

Some of us got an extra dose of the worrier gene. When my kid's dentist was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in his 40's after a nagging low backache, and died within months, you can imagine where my mind goes when my back goes out, which is happening more often with the slightest provocation. There are a million things that can go wrong and I worry about them all. My coping mechanism is to go for a walk or garden and ask myself if a dying person would be this functional. It's hard work being so crazy.

I've been crazy busy and so far behind on reading and commenting properly, but I'm trying to get caught up. It's comforting to me that you are here, writing about the crazy stuff, the ordinary stuff, all the stuff. xo

Lisa- Oh honey. No! I am such a hypochondriac although I rarely speak of my myriad of probable illnesses in case I manifest them as true. I have no idea what came over me this evening. And yes, the cure so often IS worse than the disease. I know that with all of my heart. I ponder it daily.

Nicole- I have missed you something terrible. No. You did not tell me of your coworker who loves her chickens. Unless you did and I forgot, which is entirely possible. Please know that I am thinking of you, loving you from afar.

Mel- Oh god! So maybe it's pancreatic cancer? Lord. Yes. I am convinced more than ever that we are sisters. I take my walk and sweat like a pig and reassure myself that if I were dying, I could not do it at all, much less go on to do what I need to do throughout the day. You give me so much support. Some of which you know about, some of which you probably do not. But thank you for all of it.

"It's hard work being so crazy." I love you and Mel both. Many condolences for your many cancers, but I have news -- the two of you both are going to have to stick around for me, and don't forget, it's all about me. ;)

I try very hard to answer every comment I get. This is important to me because otherwise, it's not a dialogue. Sometimes life gets busy and I can't, but I do try.
Please e-mail me for any reason whatsoever at mmerluna@aol.com